Some months after the death of her mother, teenager Samantha Rey is having trouble getting herself back together. Her schoolwork is suffering and she’s having strange dreams and visions where she finds herself in another place and time. What do they mean? What secret did her mother carry? And what does any of it have to do with the strange birthmark on her neck?

Being a major fan of the old, long-defunct CrossGen Comics, I was very curious to see what Marvel would do with the property – how much they would keep, what they would change, would the books still take place in any sort of shared universe? It’s too early to answer all of those questions – or either most of them – but Sigil #1 is a promising start. Samanta Rey is a far cry from original series’ grizzled space warrior Sam Rey, but she seems like the sort of character a series could be built around. The book also seems like this “new” CrossGen will be built more around time-travel than universe travel. (The book is even set on Earth, while the original CrossGen titles were set in the same universe, but each on a different planet.) None of those changes really bother me substantially, and I very much appreciate the appearance of another old CrossGen title here.

The artwork is very good – Leonard Kirk is an old hand at drawing teen girl comics (anybody remember his Supergirl days?), and he handles the very different sets and scenes well. There’s a certain majesty that he brings to the table, something I like quite a bit.

There’s not really anything wrong with this comic, but it isn’t wowing me just yet. There’s definite potential, and I think Mike Carey – who’s proven many a time he’s got the chops for great fantasy comics – is the right man to see it realized. It’ll be interesting to see how well he does over the course of this miniseries.